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The Technorunner

The last "maverick" roams a lifeless desert, filled with monsters of all kinds. (First Tale in Songs of the Ancients)

TheRabbitHole · Sci-fi
Not enough ratings
6 Chs

V. Dead Plane

The Outlands sheltered the dead, the remains of dead people, ghosts, remnants, or whatever the humans called them. That is why many people feared the Outlands. It was on another cross-dimensional plane different from this world. Unless one was careful, they would end up quite a feast for the swarms of the dead. However, the dead only appear on so few occasions that people are not even sure they exist. Whether it was snowing, or if the land it appeared on had skeletons buried beneath, or if someone had just died.

That was when the technorunner had an epiphany. Those ghost-like hands that he had encountered at the town earlier, they belonged to the dead, specifically the remnants. The dead who couldn't move on. And thus they inhabited the land they died on, they were different in appearance from wraiths and targhouls. If one had to explain it simply, remnants were the souls of the dead, wraiths were the distorted appearances of the dead, and targhouls were the bodies of the dead. Remnants were the least threatening out of the bunch, but they were also attracted to humans easily. And so, that was the plan that came to the technorunner.

If one were to die instantly at the moment, remnants from the town would likely appear. Unless the hunters had weapons to confront the remnants, their chances of survival were slim. The technorunner had a gun that could keep them away, but not to fully confront them.

The technorunner rose up for one final confrontation and equipped his vizor to see clearly. Before, he was simply shooting for the sake of defense, but now the situation has changed drastically. It was time to finally pull the trigger.

He aimed his shotgun at one of the archers and pulled the trigger. A stray pellet hit one of the archers in the eye, before he fell off the truck, and onto the ground.

Then silence hit the land.

For once, the hunters had lost one of their own against a bunch of has-beens, or so they thought of Ed and the technorunner.

The weather cleared, and the smog was finally gone. Dara was taking Lejin to the truck. The other hunters were looking at their dead comrade in shock.

'The fuck are you doing? Shoot them, they're still out there!' Lejin shouted.

But Lejin didn't know of what was to come, nor did the hunters. The dead plane was folktale to most people, and only those who truly roamed the Outlands believed it. Those hunters, on the other hand, weren't acquainted with the Outlands, that was why Lejin was disgusted at the place.

Dara, however, realized it the moment she saw the archer dead on the ground. She looked at the technorunner from afar, who was visible for all eyes to see, but the hunters were too busy with the dead archer, and couldn't believe that he had done such a thing.

Before anyone could do anything, the ground shook, and mist crawled like never before. The technorunner spotted the mist heading his way, immediately shot his gun in the air to keep it away, and so it did. The same couldn't be said about the hunters, however.

The technorunner watched as the mist, and thereby the remnants, engulfed one of the most powerful hunter guilds to ever exist, simply because of their ignorance. Dara, fortunately, had a weapon of her own, to protect her from the dead's range. Leijn couldn't believe that his team was being devoured by those nameless monsters. Dara grabbed him next to her, to be out of the dead's range, but it wasn't enough, they were still going to come after them once they were done with the rest of the helpless hunters.

'We… we should go!' Ed told the technorunner.

'No, not yet,' the technorunner said.

'Are ya mad?!'

'Think we'll survive on our own in this land? With all these remnants?'

The technorunner unloaded the shells in his shotgun and loaded another set of shells; shells capable of staggering the dead. He ran out of cover with his injured leg and shot the swarm of remnants feasting on the corpses, opening small holes empty of any mist or remnants. Although those pellets weren't killing them, they were already dead after all, it would only send them back from whence they came.

Lejin hid behind Dara like a true coward, as she was trying to keep the remnants away. The technorunner ran through the swarm of remnants as if he was running on water, shooting every hand the clenches onto his feet, making his way to the large truck. As he passed by Dara and Lejin, he shot the remnants surrounding them, providing a safe path for them to escape. He may have caused the death of a few hunters, saving the lives of Dara and Lejin would hopefully earn him their forgiveness.

The technorunner entered the truck to take shelter as the last of his shells were gone. The truck was out of the dead's reach, as it was on a higher level of another ground. The technorunner was hoping to find any sort of device to aid him — he went there with that intention in mind, and now that he was out of ammo, it was his only solution — or even a cycle vehicle to help him escape, the truck was large enough to contain one.

It was packed with useless scrap and junk that would be of use for him but now was not the time. He walked down the long hallway in the truck, but there wasn't anything except the control room and a couple of inanimate drones. He took the ladder to the upper floor, but the truck began to shake. He feared that the dead had found a way to infiltrate the truck, but there was still some time before that would happen.

The technorunner reached the upper floor, only to find a weapons cache and living quarters for the hunters. There was a cycle at the end of the hallway. It wasn't as large as the technorunner had expected one to be, but it was good enough to help him escape the reach of the dead.

Just before the technorunner could grab onto the cycle, someone pushed him aside. It was Dara. How she got there was out of his knowledge.

'Are you out of your mind?' Dara was furious, 'You brought upon us Helldin!'

'Your leader almost killed me,' the technorunner said, 'And don't be dramatic, it's not "Helldin," these are like any other mons—'

'You just killed most of my team!' Dara shouted.

The technorunner pushed Dara aside as she was still speaking, 'You're not listening to me— I'm trying to keep my body and soul together!'

'Fuck you!'

'You gave me no choice.'

Dara sighed, 'I should've just left you to die.'

'Well, maybe you should've… but guess what? You didn't, so I'm here, and you're here, and the dead's here,' the technorunner tried to start up the cycle, but each time, it would give up, 'So if you wanna make it outta here alive, then help me start up this damn—,'

'It's not… It's not gonna work! It's supposed to be under maintenance.'

'Oh…,' the technorunner rubbed his forehead, and rested his back to the cycle, 'So we're fucked!'

'Oh Westipis! I'll have his head!'

'Um… why did you even help me?'

'Fifth, if you don—'

Before Dara can spit another word. The truck shook in its entirety in the most aggressive manner possible. It wasn't long before the technorunner and Dara realized the truck was being turned upside down. The dead weren't trying to breach through the truck, they were going to destroy it, killing everyone within it.

There was nothing the technorunner and Dara could do, but leave themselves to fate. And straight away, the truck flipped on itself. The technorunner fell out of the ground, hit his head in one of the many obstacles in the way, and passed out.